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So this is how the story goes. In 1826 a London merchant decides to buy some cloth from a weaver in Hawick, a town in the Scottish borders famous for its cloth production. Very happy with his order, he decides to get some more but – crucially – misreads the weaver’s dashed handwriting. Instead of ‘twill’ this Londoner reads ‘tweed’, and assumes this new cloth must take after the River Tweed which runs fast and clear through the textile areas of lower Scotland. ‘Tweed’ and not ’twill’ has been the term used ever since.

Ever since watching The King and I (1956 version) at a very impressionable age, I have been rather fond of dancing (and crinolines – but that’s another story). My grandmothers and I spent many happy hours marvelling at the clothes, hairstyles and make-up of the participants in the World Championships broadcast on television.

This whole thing started a few years ago when a wedding dress came up at auction. Not being a wedding dress swooner I could nevertheless think of quite a few (entirely rational) reasons why the museum should acquire this particular example. For one thing it was made by Victor Stiebel, one of my favourite London couturiers. Secondly, we do not have enough of his creations (one never does) and they do not come up at auction very often. The dress also had an intriguing mystery inscription. We will get to that in a moment.

Just over 100 years ago this week, Sir James Barrie’s statue of Peter Pan was unveiled in Kensington Gardens (above and original image here), showing him blowing a pipe amidst squirrels, fairies and mice. This got me thinking of other literary London statues dotted throughout London, particularly ahead of our upcoming Sherlock Holmes exhibition – so through the help of Flickr I’ve pulled together a selection of the best. Do you have a favourite? Read the full post

Following on from her blogs about William Raban’s film Nightwalks, the key objects within our Dickens and London exhibition, Dickens’ family portraits, and London pubs, this week PhD student, Joanna Robinson, looks at policing in Victorian London. Joanna is a PhD student working collaboratively with the Museum of London and the English department at King’s College, London. ‘And now the strokes began to fall like hail upon the gate, and on the strong building; for those who could not reach the door, spent their fierce rage on anything—even on the great blocks of stone, which shivered their weapons into fragments, […]

Elizabeth Singleton, Host at the Museum of London, introduces our our final Dickens Book Club book for May, David Copperfield. Hello all, my name is Elizabeth and I work as a Host at the Museum of London. I must admit that Dickens has always been on the periphery of my literary life. Sure, I have always been acquainted with his work – from the multiple adaptations I have seen on screen and stage – but I have yet, until today, actually delved into the original work. And what better way to start than with the novel the writer described as his ‘favourite […]

This April, Cityread London, funded by Arts Council England, aims to get the whole of London reading Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens through a series of events and activities. Here Cityread blogger Aoife Mannix describes her visit to the Museum of London’s Dickens and London exhibition. ‘I’ve never read any of his books you know,’ the woman in front of me is saying to her companion. ‘Oh but you have to,’ is the shocked reply, ‘the characters are just so vivid and true.’ An observation backed up by the portraits on the walls of some of Dickens’ most famous creations as we […]

Sebastian Groes c. Andrew Porter Ahead of his event with Will Self, at the Museum of London, on the 12th of April, Sebastian Groes talks psychogeography… In July 1992, my father went to Los Angeles for business, and took me with him. I was seventeen and, as a boy from a Dutch hamlet, knee-deep in polder mud and accustomed only to endless fields of tulips beneath a light blue skyscape. Soon I was bored of the endless visits to overheated warehouses and air-conditioned offices, and my father decided to drop me at Venice Beach. It was a working day, and […]